34: Time Triumph (Your Daily, Weekly and Monthly Guide to Regaining Control) - part one

 

Mastering time management for entrepreneurs! (Transcript)

 

00:00:00
So in this episode, I want you to imagine I am just handing you a big fat bucket of permission to own your time. Squirrel.

00:00:13
We're going to break this down into the daily, the weekly, and the monthly things that you need to do to control your time. Because here's the deal. If you build a business to take over your life, you will have a business that will take over your life. However, if you create a business that is specifically designed to support the life you want to live, you're going to end up with a business that supports the life you want to live.

00:00:46
And I hate to break it to you, but you're not going to trip and fall into it accidentally. That rarely happens. So before we get into this, I want to share my own experience doing this the wrong way, because I want to own that I haven't done this perfectly my whole time running my business, and I still slip into bad practices sometimes, okay? So I'm going to be talking through the ideal way to do this, but know that I'm doing it imperfectly. And just like I mentioned episode 28 where Barry Bonds made a guest appearance, these are guidelines that you can make your own.

00:01:23
They are not rules. If you make them your own and do them differently, that is perfect. Do whatever works for you.

00:01:33
So when I started my business, I was convinced that I had to be available to anyone at any time that was convenient for them. And I literally set up my scheduling page to have me available from 09:00 A.m. To 09:00 P.m., Monday through Saturday. If you can imagine, I would have random bookings every single day. And because I have ADHD, if I had one booking at noon and my next one at 04:00 P.m., I wasn't getting a whole lot done between 01:00 p.m.

00:02:07
And 04:00 P.m. Because I was in waiting mode for that next appointment. So what ultimately happened is I would have one appointment at nine, one appointment at noon, one appointment at four. I'd be in waiting mode for all the time in between those sessions, just sitting there being stressed out about all the things that I needed to get done, but not actually relaxing because we don't do that, right? We're not good at that.

00:02:32
And then I wouldn't even get to my to do list until after 05:00 P.m.. After spending a full 8 hours mentally working in my head but not actually doing anything, it wasn't until a mentor told me that I had full permission to not let clients book every single day of the week that I changed this. And let me tell you when I made this change. When I went into my booking system and decided that my clients could only book on my calendar Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and only have a couple of thoughts on Fridays. I was convinced that I was going to get a bunch of emails quitting, that my clients would be calling me angry that they couldn't book at like 07:00 p.m.

00:03:15
On a Monday or on a Thursday and that people would be furious with me. And guess what happened? Nothing. Not one client noticed that I had changed my availability. They just saw the times that I had available for them to book and they chose the time that worked best for them.

00:03:36
And let me tell you, I started getting so much more done each week. Now, I've talked about time management before, but this time we're going to break it down into how you can really set yourself up for success with consistent practices and strategies. There are really helpful practices that you can do daily. There are helpful practices that you can do weekly and monthly. Let's start with the daily, shall we?

00:04:02
Here's what I do daily, or at least I try to because sometimes I'm inconsistent and I forgive myself for that. My daily practice includes a manifesting practice, which can be anything from me walking my dog and just imagining that I'm walking my dog in the middle of my ideal day five years from now and everything's going my way. And I'm so happy. And I'm making the money I want to make. And I live in this beautiful house and I have this beautiful partner, and I am just like, loving life.

00:04:35
I'm just on fire with life. And as I walk my dog, I'm just imagining that I'm that person five years from now. And I'm so in that moment because we don't attract what we want, we attract what we are. And even spending a little time each day putting yourself into that space of I already have this, I already am. This is going to be a powerful indicator to the universe that you're ready for it and that the universe can send you those things whenever it wants to.

00:05:04
So you can do it as simply as that. You could also make a daily list of everything that you're manifesting. You could light candles if you're religious. You could make this a prayer, anything that gets you tapped into that deeper sense of peace that we all experience. When how do I want to describe this?

00:05:24
Okay, so I'm going to get a little deep for a moment. So I want you to think of your meditation practice or your prayer practice or if you do yoga or anything that gets you into flow. And it could even be that those moments where you have deja vu, okay? There's that feeling, that moment where you just kind of feel zapped gently by the universe and it's like you're connected to whatever knowing is out there. And it's a sense of I'm in the right place at the right time and things are going my way and I have all the support in the universe.

00:06:06
The more time you train your brain to connect to that, the more powerful you're going to be in creating the life you want. But you're only going to get that time, you're only going to get that connection and the life that you want if you make time for it daily. So make up what this is, and because you have ADHD, you may make up like a meditation practice that works for a couple of months and then it's going to go flat and then you're going to have to change it. That is okay. It's not the practice that matters.

00:06:34
It's the connection that matters. It's the daily doing that matters. And let me tell you, the days that I don't do this are the most scattered time wasteful days that I wouldn't wish on anyone, even my worst enemy. So if you do nothing else on this list, I want you to make time for that. The next thing on your daily list that I recommend is having your three daily non negotiables. Now, this is something that I actually recommend to all of my clients that they set up for themselves. The three non negotiables. Number one is visibility.

00:07:28
If you want to have a successful business and you want to have clients, guess what? People have to know that you exist so that they can give you their money. So whatever visibility is for you, it could be speaking at an event, going to a networking group. It could be posting to social media. It could be commenting on ten posts of other people who are in your space.

00:07:47
But you have to make sure that there are people out there in the world who are either seeing your name or seeing your face or seeing both. The second daily non negotiable is you have to do something that is good for your body. And I want you to notice that I'm being super vague with that because there are some bodies that can't do exercise daily, right? There are some bodies that just need more sleep daily. There are some bodies that really benefit from being fuelled with good food and that's enough.

00:08:18
There are some bodies that benefit from running every single damn day. Those people are crazy. I love you all, but you're crazy. I don't know how you do that. Do something that you while you're doing it.

00:08:29
You are conscious that you are doing this thing for the benefit of your body's health, even if it's as simple as drinking a glass of water when you wake up. And finally, your third non negotiable is you have to do something that is good for your spirit. Now, this could be reading like a smutty fantasy book, if that's your thing. This could be going for a walk in the woods. And guess what the best thing about doing a walk in the woods for your spirit is?

00:08:55
It's also for your body. So you kill two birds with 1 st. It could be meditation. It could be your manifesting practice. I want you to imagine it's something that fills your cup, right?

00:09:05
Because we can't pour anything out of an empty cup. Now, you're going to be tempted to make these super complicated to make your meditation practice an hour to go and work out for 45 minutes every single day to write the most perfect LinkedIn post or make the most perfect TikTok that you have ADHD, which means that your energy fluctuates from day to day. Sure, there are going to be days where you're going to be able to put out 17 things of content. You're going to be able to do an hour long meditation practice, you're going to feel so good with it, and you're going to go and work out for an hour and a half. Great for those days.

00:09:40
And there are also going to be days where you can't think of anything creative to say. And so your visibility is just going to be you going and commenting on other people's posts and you don't have any physical energy. So the thing that you do for your body is take a nap in the middle of the day. And your meditation practice, it could be as simple as going outside and noticing how many colors you can perceive around you. Another great one that I do sometimes just for mindfulness practice is I go outside and I try to see how many different living beings I can see.

00:10:17
So it could be an ant or a bee or a fly or a bird or a squirrel or a chipmunk or a baby bunny. There are lots of them out right now. It's springtime. But just notice and you'll be amazed how quickly all those buzzing, anxious voices in your head quiet down. The key here is to do all three every single day.

00:10:42
The next thing that I recommend doing is sitting down with a pen and paper and doing a complete brain dump of every single task that you can imagine being on your plate in this moment, on this day. You're not going to get attached to doing it all. You're just going to barf it out onto a piece of paper until there's nothing left. Now, what this will do is it'll mitigate you spending any mental energy on trying to track all the random that you have to keep track of, right? Because you have it on a piece of paper.

00:11:14
Now, and once you have this piece of paper, I want you to look at this list and I want you to find the three realistic, most impactful actions you can take today. And I want to stress that they have to be realistic for you to accomplish today. So, for instance, if I have an admin day and one of the most impactful things on the list is to write a whole email campaign for this new launch, that could be realistic for me. However, if it's a client day and I have five clients pretty much back to back, guess what? I'm not going to get done.

00:11:53
There's no way in hell I'm going to have the energy or the creative bandwidth to write a whole email campaign. After talking to five clients, be kind to yourself. Find the three realistic, most impactful thing and do that. Now this also, like, one of those things could be posting to social media, which also checks off your three daily non negotiables for visibility. Let's be economical.

00:12:20
Let's have things count for multiple stuff, because you get the extra dopamine hit from it, right? And if you need accountability, tell them, hey, do you mind holding me accountable here? And if you need support, ask them for support. If you're trying to come up with something interesting to say to put on social media, ask them what's interesting about what I do. Can you help me here?

00:12:41
Oftentimes we have lived a whole life where we don't want anyone to know that we're struggling. And so we end up becoming hyper independent, thinking that we have to do it all by ourself without the support of anyone else, because we have to be able to prove to them that we can do it on our own, that you don't have to do it on your own. No one does it on their own. Are you kidding? It takes a village to raise a business.

00:13:06
But for you to raise the business, you have to tap into your village. You have to ask the village for help. There is a very problematic movie that I'm going to reference. I'm not endorsing anything in the storyline. I just want a name.

00:13:19
It's called Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.

00:13:46
And it's basically seven brothers who live in the mountains go and kidnap seven women and then make them marry them. Well, they don't make them, but like, at the end, they end up all getting married. Really fucked up.

00:14:01
But there's this one scene in this movie that, as a kid, I was so impressed by. And they had this barn raising and literally the whole town came together with stuff for a picnic. All the equipment, all the tools. And every single person came together to put up a barn. And they had a whole party at the end.

00:14:22
Well, I mean, in the movie it goes terribly wrong because the seven brothers start a fight and it all goes to hell in a handbasket. But the idea of that, that you can if you need a barn built, you just pull in your whole town, your whole community is just such a magical concept and I wish we embodied that more in the modern day. So here is me giving you full permission to invite your whole village to come and help you build this business. Because guess what? They will be delighted to help you in any way that they can.

00:14:53
So that is the daily stuff that I want you to do. Don't overthink it. Make it your own. Don't get precious about it being perfect. It's going to look different pretty much every single day.

00:15:02
And that is great. What's important here is you have to find the way to make it work for you. Now, let's look at your week.

00:15:12
So I was recently talking to a friend and they were saying that their calendar would make me barf because they had days where they were doing 8 hours of back to back calls. They were letting clients book in on their break times and so on and so forth. And I didn't barf, but I wanted to. Thank God. I don't like throwing up.

00:15:34
So remember when I said that I used to do this too? I used to let my clients book whenever they wanted on my calendar, monday through Saturday, 09:00 A.m. To 09:00 P.m.. So I had this mentor who told me to stop doing that. And I was so afraid that if I limited my days when I took client calls that I would lose clients.

00:15:52
And I didn't. So here's what I want you to do. I want you to draw up your mock ideal week. And before you put anything that has to do with your work, I want you to map out all the personal things that you want to do every single week. I want you to map out exactly when you want to have a lunch break.

00:16:14
If you want to take your dog for a walk mid afternoon, you're going to schedule that too. If you want to work out either early morning or late afternoon before you have dinner, schedule that right. Now if you want to take Thursdays off to go see your son play Little League, put that in there as well. When and only when you finish that, you get to go in and schedule the work you're going to do. Now, if you run a business where you take client calls, you can pick very particular days where you take client calls.

00:16:45
Now, I mentioned that I take client calls on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Now, there's a reason for this. Mondays I am not good. Mondays I am just waking up to the fact that the weekend is over. I have forgotten how I do my job, even though I do it every single week.

00:17:02
And I need a little time to get acclimated to the waters of my business again. So I have different meetings with my team that helps me get organized. I host a sprint call for all my clients where they can get organized and IPSO facto, I get to get organized also. In that time, I give myself lots and lots of time to get creative and create content. And I usually do personal things like meal prep and grocery shopping on that day, but in reverse order because you have to buy the groceries first before you cook it.

00:17:34
Obviously. Now on Tuesdays and Wednesdays I have client calls on Thursdays, I very purposely keep that locked off for Admin and for my build your own Business group program because usually I've had a lot of Admin tasks pile up over Tuesday and Wednesday. There are emails I haven't gotten to. There's editing for email campaigns that my clients need help with and I need some time to do that. It's also when I take the majority of my sales calls and then again Friday afternoons, I get organized.

00:18:04
Anything that I didn't complete that week, I put it on my list. Well, ideally I put it on my list. Sometimes I forget to do this part. Sometimes the weekend just calls and I go and do my weekend. But on weeks where I'm good and I stick to my own plan and I just want to be totally open about this because I don't want you thinking I'm perfect.

00:18:21
I am not on weeks where I am ending my week purposefully. I make a list of everything that I want to get done early the next week. And let's be real, I do do some work on the weekends, but I do work that I'm excited for on the weekends, work that taps into my hyper focus stuff that I am so excited to tackle. And I just need some extra time because it's a creative project and I need a big window of time to get into it. But I do that out of choice, not out of necessity.

00:18:56
So that is me. That works for me. You can steal it, you can duplicate it, you could change it, whatever works best for you. But I want to give you that whole bucket of permission here to own your time, to dictate when clients can book with you and not let them dictate how you run your life. There are two great books that I want to recommend here and one I'm going to cringe a little bit.

00:19:19
I love him, but I cringe a little bit at recommending this book because it is just so basic in the entrepreneurial space. And you know what it is the four hour work Week. I mean, Tim Ferriss talks about designing a business that he literally could not unplug from. And it's why he ended up with the concept of the Four Hour Work Week because he burned himself out so badly and he really had to backpedal from this business that he created that took over his life. Now, I don't agree with everything in there, but there are some really great recommendations for how you can start managing your time better.

00:19:56
There's also another book by Derek Seavers who was the founder of CD Baby. If you remember what CDs even are. They were devices that we used to play music off of. I'm talking to you. Gen zers.

00:20:10
Gen z's. There are kids now that when they see a floppy disk, they think that we have 3D printed the icon for the save button on our computers. If you are hearing this and you don't feel old, like back in my day, we had to have a washboard and we went down to the river and we rubbed our clothes clean. Anyway, so anyway, back to Derek Seavers. He wrote this really helpful book.

00:20:44
It's super short. You could literally pour yourself a cup of coffee and read most of it. It's called anything you want. And in it he describes how he designed this business to be exactly what he wanted to support his life. There's a really cute little chapter where he decided just to have fun with stuff.

00:21:01
So whenever someone would order a CD through their website, I mean, oh my God, that just sounds like such an old concept. The confirmation page that they had said something like please wait while our CD Leprechauns lovingly take the CD out of the stacks and put it in a box and give it a kiss and send it off to you. Or something like that. It's adorable. It's such a great book because it reminds you that you are the owner of your business and you get to do whatever the you want.

00:21:25
So that is what you need to do weekly, in my opinion. And of course, again, make it your own, make it work for you. Really decide what is the life that you want to live going forward and make your work support that. It's the only way it's going to happen. So we've covered the daily practice and we've covered the weekly practice.

00:21:44
Another practice that is going to be game changing for you and your business and your progress towards your goals is to schedule a monthly CEO Day. Now, the CEO Day can look a million different ways depending on who you are, what your business is, what your goals are. But the important thing is to schedule time to go over all the things that are important to you. And if you're curious about how I schedule my CEO Days and how I recommend them to my clients, you might want to go and check out our premium podcast or our premium episode where I go over the exact format that I recommend for a proper CEO day. And you can check that out at weeniecast.com/winners

 

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